


The Feeling of Feeling

by formerlydf



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-16
Updated: 2008-03-16
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4531023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/pseuds/formerlydf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine in the Afternoon AU. <i>Spencer and Brendon and Ryan and Jon live on the square in the center of town, their houses and green yards and white picket fences all facing in opposite directions, one to each side.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feeling of Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> I very much doubt that anyone here hasn't seen the Nine in the Afternoon music video, but in case you haven't, [here it is.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCto3PCn8wo)

Spencer and Brendon and Ryan and Jon live on the square in the center of town, their houses and green yards and white picket fences all facing in opposite directions, one to each side. It's like an inside out circle; the faces of the houses look outward to the streets, ignoring their connecting backyards.

In Summerland, yards are always perfect and property values are always high and children are always scampering adorably all over the place. In Summerland, families eat together at the dinner table and talk about their day in impeccably clean houses with improbably gleaming windows. There is no gossip or pettiness or rudeness in Summerland.

In Summerland, there are four converging corners of four forgotten backyards, and sometimes four forgotten boys like to sit there and pretend they're not in Summerland for a while.

.

Three 'o clock; officially twilight. Ryan leans against the fence separating his own backyard from everyone else's — next to Spencer and Jon, across from Brendon, just a cross of white-painted wood keeping them apart. It's probably symbolic. He ignores it.

Spencer shows up next, resting his hands on the fence and nodding a hello to Ryan. Ryan nods back and watches Jon cross the wet grass to get to their meeting spot. It's Thursday; it rained this morning.

Brendon shows up last, which isn't uncommon. He winds his way around his mother's flowers and settles into his own corner like there's an empty space there waiting for him, a Brendon-shaped space.

"Spencer," he says.

Spencer says, "Ryan."

Ryan says, "Jon."

Jon says, "Brendon."

Now they can each sit down, lean against their fences with their backs to each other, almost touching except for a few planks of smooth wood.

Jon tilts his head back so it rests against the fence, closes his eyes against the bubblegum-pink remnants of the sunset. Nobody says anything. In the corners in the middle of the yard, they can hardly even hear the usual sounds of Summerland — no kids running through sprinklers, happily home from school. No mothers chatting on the phone as they cook dinner, no fathers watching the game. Just a couple crickets chirping, and the sound of breathing.

.

When Spencer wakes up in the morning, he goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, gets dressed. He passes by the elephant's room when he walks through the hallway and down the stairs.

"Morning, Mom," he says as happily as he can manage, smiling at her. She says, "Good morning, Spencer!" and hands him a plate.

Eggs this morning. He's only recently grown too old for her to make him a smiley face with the eggs and one piece of bacon; now he just gets the eggs, perfectly round. The yolk is almost exactly the color of the sun he knows will be outside.

"Thanks," he says, digging his knife and fork into it.

The elephant wanders downstairs and pours himself a cup of coffee. There are no eggs for him, but he's got a cabinet that all the rest of them carefully ignore, full of whatever it is that elephants eat, Spencer supposes. He's never asked.

"You excited to go to school today?" Mrs. Smith asks, wiping her hands on her neat white apron.

"Sure," Spencer says. The elephant sits down and starts eating. Spencer doesn't look closely enough to see what it is.

"Oh, good. Your father's already at the office," she tells him, even though Spencer already knows this. "He says he'll be home nice and early today. Maybe you two can go play ball in the park." She smiles at him happily.

"Maybe," Spencer says. "If I don't have too much homework."

She ruffles his hair. "You're such a good boy, Spencer."

The elephant finishes eating and puts his bowl and mug in the sink; he goes upstairs, as quietly as an elephant can. It isn't very quiet.

Spencer polishes off his eggs and his mother takes the plate, deposits it in the sink to start washing it. She frowns when she sees the elephant's dishes. "Now who put that there?"

Spencer doesn't believe her. "I have to go to school, Mom," he says.

"I love you," she says, kissing him on the cheek. "Have a good day, sweetie."

"You too," he says, picking up his backpack and walking outside. He closes the door behind him.

.

Mr. and Mrs. Ross are preeminent citizens of Summerland; nobody's ever quite sure why, but they are. Mr. Ross always looks so dignified, and Mrs. Ross is so lovely, such a nice woman, really, gives the best dinner parties.

And Ryan, their son, what a smart boy he is! Really, what a perfect family; you couldn't imagine one better. They really belong in Summerland; we'd never let them go. So delightful, the three of them.

Ryan reads everything. He reads library books and his textbooks and all the books his parents buy him for Christmas, and he's perfectly willing to discuss them with anyone who asks.

In his room, behind the oversized clock on the wall, there's a latch and a door that nobody but Ryan knows is there. Behind the door is another pile of books, but not library books or textbooks or the books his parents buy him for Christmas. The edges of the pages are yellowed and dull, worn down and fragile from years of never being looked at, because Ryan gets these books from basements and closets and places where no one is ever supposed to look.

Ryan reads everything, and he's always picking up things that he shouldn't read. He has to be careful not to crumble the pages when he opens the books up and carefully flips through.

Books in Summerland have clean white pages with straight edges and sharp corners, and neat black words standing out on the page. Books in Summerland are about marriages and families and happy endings, so that you always have a smile on your face after you put them down. Books in Summerland have proper sentence structure and upstanding main characters who you would be delighted to take home to your mother.

Ryan reads books that are disjointed and broken. He reads books about death and hatred and sadness and sex and humanity. He reads them, and he rereads them, and then he puts them back inside his walls and becomes the perfect son again.

.

"Brendon!" Ally calls, and Cally yells, "Ryan!" and Jenny yells, "Spencer!" and Penny calls, "Jon!"

"Oh, fu — cr — sh — drat," Brendon mutters, because they're in the front yard, not the back, and there's no cursing in the streets of Summerland.

"Come on," Spencer suggests, and they run away.

The girls follow, Ally and Cally and Jenny and Penny and Tracy and Stacy and Shelly and Kelly and Polly and Molly and Holly and Jessy and Beth, just like always. They're laughing, because one day, Brendon and Ryan and Jon and Spencer will marry one of them, and their children will grow up in Summerland and get married and have children who will grow up in Summerland. It's all just a matter of time.

Beth is a little behind, just like always, and she takes out a bow and arrow and shoots Brendon right through one waving hand.

"Huh," Brendon says, and Ryan rolls his eyes.

He likes the mustache girls better; they stay with their flowers and smile, except on Tuesdays, when they join the parade.

.

There's always a parade on Tuesdays, and it always rains late Wednesday night, dripping into Thursday morning. The ground is always dry again by Tuesday, so that the members of the parade don't slip.

The rain is light, enough to keep the plants fresh and vibrantly green but not so much that everyone has to trudge through the mud on Thursday. There's always rainbow puddles for the little kids to play in, though, before they get dried up by the sun.

The only time there isn't a parade is when it snows, and it always snows from the beginning of December to the end of January. The snow is always on a Friday or a Monday, and nobody ever drives, so there's never any brown sludge in the middle of the road. Just perfectly pristine precipitation, sparkling white in all directions.

When it comes time for the kids to go to school the next day, somehow the roads are always perfectly clear, front yards still covered in a thick layer of snow. There are no measly one-inch snowfalls, no flurries, just big snowflakes drifting down until they pile up into a foot of snow.

What Jon really wants, more than anything, is for it to storm.

Even when there are storms in Summerland, they only last five minutes, and it's not really a storm at all. The lightning is all forty-five degree angles and cheerfully yellow, with round raindrops falling out of the sky happily. Jon wants rain that hurts to walk into. He wants hail and thunder that rumbles and lightning that cracks loudly when it hits the ground.

There's nothing like that in Summerland. He got it from one of Ryan's books and his own imagination, the daydreams he gets when he sneaks outside every Wednesday night to wait for the rain to start and stop.

Everything in Summerland is so perfect; he just wants something that he can think of as real. He gets a camera and starts snapping photos of anything, everything that seems out of place; an overflowing trash can, a cigarette butt in the middle of the street, a hedge that's been allowed to grow wild, an upside-down stop sign, four converging corners of four forgotten backyards.

.

Spencer comes home from school to find the elephant sitting in the corner of the living room, reading the newspaper. He glances away quickly and looks at his father, who's sitting on the couch watching sports.

"You get home early today?" Spencer asks, because in Summerland, everyone follows a pretty regular schedule; work starts at nine, goes until five, fathers are home when mothers are just starting to cook dinner.

"Did your mom tell you I'd be home early, sport?" his dad wonders from the flowered sofa.

"Oh. Yeah." Spencer does remember that, now. He hadn't known it would be this early, but he guesses that this makes sense, too; fathers come home early, a little before sons get in the door, and they bond. "Okay."

"So what do you say, huh?" his dad asks. "Wanna come watch the game with me?"

"I've got homework," Spencer says, and his father beams.

"You're such a great kid, Spence. You make me proud."

"Thanks," Spencer says. "I'm going to go up to my room and do my homework."

"Sounds good. And don't forget to come down in time for dinner; your mother's making her famous meatloaf."

Spencer wonders, briefly, what the elephant eats for dinner, if it's the same thing he eats for breakfast. If he ever gets tired of not being seen. "I won't."

"Alright, then." His dad lifts up the remote and raises the volume, looking around him. "Where did that newspaper go?"

A crinkling sound comes from the corner as the elephant flips a page, and Spencer walks upstairs.

.

When Brendon was in seventh grade, he wrote an essay. Ryan and Spencer and Jon helped, a little, helped with the words and structure and coherency, but it was still his essay.

He asked, Is it really possible for something to be as perfect as we're told Summerland is? and he asked, What is life like outside of Summerland? and he asked, Doesn't anybody feel like they don't feel unique anymore?

His teacher sent a note home, stapled to the front of the essay and written in red ink. Brendon is very precocious, she said, I worry about some of his ideas, she said, I believe you should talk to him, she said, I know he's a good kid.

Brendon's mom said, "Well, sweetheart, this is a very impressive essay."

"Tha —"

"These are some fancy words you use in here," Brendon's dad boomed. "You get some help from the Ross boy?"

"Yes," Brendon said, "but —"

"Oh, well that explains it," Brendon's mother said, nodding. "Ryan has always been a little... well, you know."

"No," Brendon said, "I —"

"Why don't you go practice your music, Brendon," Brendon's dad said.

"Dad, I —"

"Oh, yes, sweetheart, work on that song you were playing the other day," Brendon's mom said, smiling. "It sounded so good."

Brendon went to his room and practiced his music. His room had a dozen fire extinguishers for a fire that would never burn; in Summerland, the fire department is never needed.

Now, he goes up to his room and practices music without them telling him to. He's gotten really good over the years, even though his only audience is his walls.

.

Twelve-thirty; the cheerful yellow sun is just peeking over the horizon, with a glimmer of light blue where the sky meets the ground, and the moon is quickly sinking down out of embarrassment that it let itself stay in the sky for so long.

Spencer says, "I'm sick of this."

He stands up and starts yanking at the white picket fence, trying to jerk the posts out of the ground. Jon, Brendon and Ryan turn around and scramble to their feet, their eyes as wide as the disappearing moon.

"Spencer?" Jon asks, and Spencer just growls, "I'm fucking sick of this, I'm so fucking sick of this, goddamnit, just help me get this fucking fence down."

"There's a hammer in my toolshed," Ryan suggests.

There's a momentary lull, and Spencer eventually says, "Okay." Ryan walks off to get it, his gait measured in the vividly green grass. He's wearing his pajamas.

"Why do you want the fence down?" Jon asks, and Spencer snaps, "Why don't you?"

"Not all of the fence," Brendon says, leaning between the posts. "Just this bit."

There's silence while Jon takes this in, and when Ryan returns with the large, rounded hammer, they all take turns swinging.

.

When Spencer wakes up in the morning, he goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, gets dressed. He passes by the elephant's room when he walks through the hallway and down the stairs — and then, halfway down, the scent of eggs wafting out of the kitchen and into his nose, he walks back up the stairs.

"Hey!" he says, knocking on the elephant's door. "What do you want for breakfast?"

.

Nine in the afternoon, and Brendon and Jon and Ryan and Spencer are sitting in a square, fencing moved around to create a little box in the middle of their backyards, separating them from everything else around them. They can step over the fences; they don't think anyone else will bother. They don't think anyone else will notice.

They've been sitting out here for a while now, but it's about time to go back in. Ryan stands with a sigh, and everyone else follows, stretching out their arms.

Brendon kisses Jon, who kisses Ryan, who kisses Spencer, who kisses Brendon.

As they all prepare to leave, getting ready to swing themselves over the sections of fence that connect to their respective backyards, Ryan says, "See you later." It's a promise, not a goodbye.

The sun is shining, the bees are humming, and one day they're going to get their own place, just the four of them, far away from here. For now, though, it's maybe not so bad in Summerland, not when they've got their square in the middle of the four converging corners of their four forgotten backyards.


End file.
